



3 iLinil/£^ 




Gass L^Zl. 
Book jX_i_ 



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DEIvIVERKD AT COLUNIBIA, NIC, 
ON JUNE 4, 1885. 



BY- 



.q,^ .-^ 



ST. LOUIS: 
Buxton & Skinner Stationery Company. 

1885. 






A/ > si i' 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 



Two miles from the spot where Thomas Jefferson was born, near 
the junction of the Rivanna and James rivers, in Albemarle county, 
Virginia, on the lands which he inherited from his father, rises Monti- 
cello or the Little Mount, five hundred and eighty feet high, the home 
for more than sixty years, and the final resting place, of the patriot and 
statesman. 

During the long summer days of the year 1765, on a rustic bench 
near its summit, beneath the branches of a majestic oak, could be seen 
two young men, in the early bloom of manhood, students of the law. 
and devoted friends. The one was Thomas Jefferson, and the other 
Dabney Carr. 

Lifting their eyes from the pages of Coke on Lyttleton they rested 
upon a landscape of enchanting beauty. On their right the lowlands of 
Virginia stretched away in an unbroken plain to the ocean, with the 
Rivanna and James like threads of silver ; whilst on their left the Blue 
Ridge, " robed in azure hue," looked down upon the billowy hills that 
nestled at their feet. It was here that the two friends made solemn 
compact, mutually pledging their sacred honor, that beneath this oak 
should be their burial place ; and here their ashes rest. 

Dabney Carr married Martha Jefferson, his friend's sister, and died 
eight years after, in the outset of his splendid career, leaving a widow 
and six children, who became inmates of Jefferson's household, and 
the objects, during life, of his unceasing love and care. Fifty-three 
years afterwards, having served his country for- forty-four years, with 
an unselfish honesty, and unwearied industry unequalled in all history, 
Thomas Jefferson was buried by the side of his boyhood's friend. 



2 ^ THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

Amongst his papers, after death, was found a rough sketch in ink 
of an obelisk to be made of granite, eight feet in height, together with 
the inscription now upon the marble tablet before us : 

" Here was buried 

Thomas Jefferson, 

Author o± the Declaration of 

American Independence, 

of 

The Statute of Virginia 

For Religious Freedom, and 

Father of the University 

of Virginia." 

It is a significant epitaph, and worthy of him who wrote it. Jeffer- 
son had been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and of 
the Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, 
Secretary of Stat^, Vice President and President of the United States, 
but none of these honors or titles are upon the stone which marked his 
grave. True to his convictions, shown by every public and private 
/act, the sworn enemy of parade, sham and ostentation, the stern old 
Democrat wanted, living or dead, none of the tinsel and trappings of 
heraldic pomp or titular glory. He named for himself his passports to 
immortality — the rights of man, religious liberty and universal educa- 
tion. 

Notwithstanding his many honors and public trusts, Jefferson died a 
bankrupt, and his estate, including Monticello, passed into the hands 
of strangers. The desolation of war, and the more ruinous touch of 
vandal hands, caused his grave to fall into neglect, and the stone which 
marked, it has been mutilated and defaced. 

On April 18th, 1882, Congress appropriated $10,000 " for the erec- 
tion of a suitable monument, and to make other suitable improvements 
over the grave of Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello, Virginia," and 
through the exertions of Dr. S. S. Laws and Prof. A. F. Fleet, the 
slab and obelisk which originally marked the spot have been given to 
the University of Missouri by the heirs of Thomas Jefferson, a sacred 
memento of that incoiTuptible Chief Magistrate and greatest of Ameri- 
can statesmen. 

Time has its revenges, but also its benedictions. Missouri, grand- 
daughter of Virginia, receives with uncovered brow and reverential 
hands, this historic memorial, which will rest hereafter upon the soil 
won to the Union by the matchless statesmanship and prophetic genius 
of Thomas Jefferson. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 3 

May this granite be emblematic of our eternal and unchanging devo- 
tion to his doctrines and teachings! 

From that rustic seat beneath the old oak on Moiiticello, Jefferson 
went forth to make untiring and i^elentless war upon tyranny and op- 
pression in every shape. For nearly fifty years his form towered in 
the front of every battle for civil and religious liberty, and there was 
not one single moment in which he ceased to struggle for human 
rights. It is almost impossible after so many years, and under circum- 
stances so changed, to realize the appalling difficulties which con- 
fronted the advocates of civil and religious freedom in the last century, 
and especially in Virginia. So far from being a leveler, or communist, 
as his enemies have charged, Jefferson was by lineage, estate and asso- 
ciation an aristocrat. 

He had in his veins the blue blood of the Randolphs, who, as Jef- 
ferson tells us in his autobiography, "trace their pedigree far back in 
England and Scotland, to which let every one asci^ibe the faith and 
merit he chooses." Besides, he was boi"n a land and slave owner, 
educated at the College of William and Mary, an institution established 
and endowed by royalty, and when a student in the old town of Williams- 
burg, the first capital of Virginia, was the favorite protege of Francis 
Fauquier, the royal governor, at whose table he was a constant guest. 

Passionately devoted to music, sculpture and painting, an accom- 
plished Greek, Latin and French scholar, whilst in the higher mathe- 
matics, philosophy and the sciences he was without an equal amongst 
public men, Jefferson was naturally drawn by such tastes and pursuits 
away from the people, as they were then contemptuously called, and to 
the privileged classes who claimed by inheritance a monopoly of 
wealth, education and culture. 

New Virginia was then but the gross caricature of old England. 
The Rakehelly cavaliers who fought under Prince Rupert were repro- 
duced in an exaggerated form in the young planters of the province. 
To primogeniture, entail and the union of Church and State, had been 
added the curse of African slavery ; and to raise tobacco, clear more 
land and buy more slaves, all to be at last squandered in riotous living, 
seemed to be the chief end of the Virginia gentleman. 

Loyal to king and church, these fox hunting, deep drinking and gal- 
lant Virginians were ready to risk life and limb against any odds, in 
defense of the divine right of kings and the ecclesiastical supremacy of 
the Church of England. 

From his four years' study of the law, and after mastering com- 
pletely Coke on Lyttleton, which he had read and re-read and carefully 



4 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

annotated, Jefferson stepped into a world of crystallized wrong and 
robbery, made up from ages of legal precedent, and sanctified by so- 
called religion; but not In vain had he studied the black letter pages of 
that sterling old Whig text book, of which Jefferson afterwards wrote : 

" Coke Lyttleton was the universal law book of students, and a 
sounder Whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox 
doctrines of the British Constitution, or in what was called British 
liberties. 

" Our lawyers were then all Whigs. But when his black letter text 
and uncouth but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honeyed 
Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the student's horn book, from that 
moment that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide 
into Toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers are now of 
that line. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be Whigs, because 
they no longer know what Whigism or Republicanism means." 

When, therefore, in 1765, young Jefferson, fresh from Coke Lyt- 
tleton, stood at the door of the lobby of the House of Burgesses, in 
Williamsburg, and heard Patinck Henry denounce in burning words 
the Stamp Act and the whole system of kingcraft, the seed fell into 
ground well prepared for the truth. 

SLAVERY. 

In 1769 Jefferson entered public life as a member of the House of 
Burgesses from his native county of Albemarle. His first measure 
was to provide for the gradual emancipation of slaves, but it resulted 
in utter failure, and is now only valuable as indicating the settled 
opinions of Jefferson upon the subject of slavery, and his fearlessness 
in grappling with the overwhelming public sentiment of his State in 
its favor. 

Whilst a slave owner all his life, Mr. Jefferson was opposed to the 
institution and desired its gradual extinction. Like many intelligent 
men in the slaveholding States, he deprecated the existence of slavery, 
but resented the statement that the people of these States were alone 
responsible for the evil, or that those who had originally introduced 
slaves through their own avarice had the right to interfere after- 
wards with the property of the citizens to whom the slaves had been 
sold. 

With prophetic vision, Jefferson saw the dreadful panorama of war 
and desolation which must accompany the end of slavery, unless 
peaceful means were adopted for that purpose. Speaking of gradual 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 5 

emancipation, he says in his autobiography, written when he was sev- 
enty-seven years old : 

" It was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposi- 
tion, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant 
when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is 
more certainly written m the book of fate than that these people are to 
be free, nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot 
live in the same government." 

One portion of this prediction has been verified, and African slavery 
has been drowned in the. tears and blood of both North and South. 

At the same time it is not difficult to realize how utterly beyond the 
imagination of any mortal inan fifty years ago, must have been the 
idea, not of emancipation, but that the emancipated slave would grasp 
the ballot and participate in the government of the country. 

We know now that the Negro race, with its parasitic tendencies and 
strong local attachments, will never submit to colonization, and that 
this philantropic dream has vanished before the logic of events. The 
Negi'o is a component part of our civilization, and must so remain. 

It is the very irony of history that of all the slave-holding States, 
Virginia should have suffered most in defending an institution forced 
upon her people by the greed of Old and New England, in opposition 
to the judgment and Welshes of her most distinguished men. 

As far^back as 1770, Virginia had protested against the introduction 
of African slaves, but the protest was silenced by the royal edict, and 
the traffic went on. 

In 1776, Jefferson framed with his own hand an indictment of the 
King of Great Britain, in the following words : 

" He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its 
most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons orf a distant people 
who never offended him ; captivating them and carrying them into 
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in then" 
transportation thither. 

" This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the 
warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep 
open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prosti- 
tuted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit 
or restrain this execrable commerce. 

"And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distin- 
guished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among 
us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by 
murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them : thus paying off 



6 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

former crimes committed against tlie liberties of one people with 
crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." 

These burning sentences were a part of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence as originally written by Jefferson and reported to Congress, but 
so strong was the influence of South Carolina, Georgia and New Eng- 
land, in favor of the slave trade, that the words were stricken out, and 
the Declaration was adopted as we now see it. 

In 1778, two years later, Virginia made it a felony to import slaves 
into her limits, and in 1787, when she gave to the Union the Northwest 
Territory, the most princely gift in all "the annals of recorded time," 
Jefferson prepared the ordinance, and incorporated in its provisions the 
condition, "that after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be 
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, 
otherwise than in punishment of ci-inies, whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted to have been personally guilty." 

Again, in the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution of 
1789, when the question of permitting further importation of slaves 
was under discussion, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, said : 

" This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants. 
The British Government constantly checked the attempt of Virginia to 
put a stop to it. Maryland and Virginia had already prohibited the 
importation of slaves expressly, and North Carolina had done the same 
in substance." 

Declaring then in the strongest terms his opposition to slavery, he 
concluded by stating that " he lamented that some of our Eastern 
brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic." 

Luther Martin, of Maryland, declared the slave trade " to be incon- 
sistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the 
American character, to have such a feature in the Constitution." 

In this state of things, Gouverneur Morris, adverting to the circum- 
stance that the sixth section of the same article, then under considera- 
tion, contained a provision "that no navigation act should pass without 
the consent of two-thirds of the members present in each house" — a 
provision particularly affecting the interests of the New England 
States — suggested that this, together with the fourth and fifth sections, 
should be referred to a committee, in order that a bargain might be 
formed between the parties out of these elements of special local in- 
terest on the one side and the other. 

The suggestion was adopted, and on the second daj' afterward the 
committee reported, extending the slave trade to 1800, and striking out 
the provision requiring a two-thirds vote to enact a navigation law. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 7 

When the report came up in the Convention, General Piackney, of 
South Carolina, moved to extend the slave trade to 1808, and the mo- 
tion was seconded by Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts. 

Mr. Madison earnestly and eloquently opposed the motion, declar- 
ing it to be dishonorable to the American character, but his opposition 
was in vain. 

Hand in hand, Massachusetts and South Carolina led the cohorts of 
slavery, and the motion prevailed, all the Nevs^ England States, with 
South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina voting for it, 
and Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware voting against it. 

Luther Martin was a member of the committee to which I have 
alluded, and in a letter afterward to the Maryland House of Delegates, 
siiys: 

" I found the Eastern States, notwithstanding their aversion to slav- 
ery, were very willing to indulge the Southern States, at least with a 
temporary liberty to prosecute the slave trade, provided the Southern 
States in their iurn would gratify them b}^ laying no restriction on the 
navigation acts.'^ 

Grand, even in her desolation, Virginia, noblest of ancient or mod- 
ern commonwealths, can point to this record and hear in comtemptu- 
ous silence the taunts and sneers of the political Pharisees, who " mock 
at her calamity." 

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

Although Jefferson had failed in his attack on African slavery, he 
did not for a moment relax in his opposition to the arbitrary and op- 
pressive measures of the British king. 

In 1772 the people of Rhode Island began the Revolution by burn- 
ing the British war vessel Gaspie, in Narragansett Bay, and when the 
ministers of George the Third claimed the right to transport the per- 
sons accused from Rhode Island to England for trial, Jefferson saw 
at once that the time had come for joint and concerted action between 
all the colonies. To concede this claim as to the humblest citizen, was 
to surrender the liberties of all. In the early part of March, 1772, 
Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Dab- 
ney Carr and Thomas Jefferson met at the Raleigh Tavern, in 
Williamsburg, Virginia, and th-ew up the famous resolutions pledging 
Virginia to stand by Rhode Island, and creating a committee of eleven, 
whose duty it should be to correspond with the other colonies, and 
concert measures for the general defence. 



8 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

It is singula!" with what pertinacity amidst all the passionate debates and 
resolves of this eventful period, Jefferson and his associates still clung to 
the idea of loyalty to the king. Not till 1775 did he reluctantly come to 
the conclusion that the colonies must separate from the mother country. 
Thus had the commons of England advanced step by step until the 
head of Charles the First rolled from his shoulders before his palace at 
White Hall, and thus had the Girondists given place to the revolution, 
until Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette died beneath the axe 
of the Guillotine. In 1774, the people of Boston threw into the har- 
bor the famous shipment of tea, and the King of England retaliated 
by closing the port. Again, Jefferson and his associates met at the 
Raleigh Tavern, and resolved to stand by New England. Massachu- 
setts and Virginia then stood shoulder to shoulder, and who could 
have believed that in less than a century the same States would grapple^ 
in deadly conflict P^.f'On June 21st, 1775, Jefferson took his seat as a 
/tnemHer of the Continental Congress, and in June, 1776, wrote, with 
/ his own hand, the Declaration of American Independence, the most ^ 
V sublime enunciation, save one, ever made to the human race. 
V^That " all governments derive their just powers from the consent of 
the governed," is but a corollary from the divine injunction, "All things 
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." 
Together these two great truths embrace all the rights and duties of 
mankind. 
f The Declaration, having been reported to Congress, was debated on\ 
1 the second, third and fourth days of July, and adopted on the afternoon / 
\of the Fourth, every member present signing it, except Mr. Dickinson./ 
/ In after years, Mr. Jefferson related with great humor a ludicrous 
event connected with this solemn transaction. Near the hall in which 
Congress assembled was a large livery stable, and the weather being 
extremely warm, the bloodthirsty and aggressive flies, which swarmed 
through the open windows, attacked our patriotic fathers, in abbrevi- 
ated pants and thin silk stockings, with such pertinacity, as to termi- 
nate the debate. 

So near to the sublime is the ridiculous, and so wonderfully do the most 
insignificant creatures influence the destiny of man ! 

REFORMING VIRGINIA. 

Thirteen States had now sprung into being, with institutions and 
laws not only varying as between themselves, but with some utterlv 
opposed to the genius and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 9 

In none of the colonies were abuses so rife and firmly established as 
in Virginia. Primogeniture and entail had created a class of thought- 
less elder brothers and vagabond heirs, who were reckless and self- 
indulgent to the very verge of lawlessness. 

The union of Church and State had destroyed the rights of consci- 
ence, and a licentious clergy, so far from "leading the way to heaven," 
were merely adjuncts to the great houses, where high play and old 
madeira rewarded their complaisant ministry. 

The world, for hundreds of years, had listened to the clanking of 
chains and shrieks of martyrs, whilst fire and faggot irradiated the 
deadly work of religious bigotry. 

Even the Pilgrims, flying from persecution, no sooner found them- 
selves firmly established in New England, than they began to torture 
in the name of God. 

To deny any book of the Old or New Testaments to be the word of 
God was punished by fire or by stripes, and blasphemy left the delin- 
quent without his ears and with his tongue bored by a red hot iron. 
Men were pilloried, branded and executed for non-conformity to the 
established church, and in but three out of the thirteen colonies was 
there religious toleration — Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsyl- 
vania. 

Mr. Jefferson graphically describes the condition of Virginia : 

"The first settlers of this country were emigrants from England of 
the English church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with 
complete victory over the religion of all other persuasions. Possessed, 
as they became, of the power of making, administering and executing 
the laws, they showed equal intolerance in this country with their Pres- 
byterian brethren who had emigrated to the northern government. 
The poor Quakers were flying from persecution in England ; they cast 
their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and religious 
freedom, but they found them free only for the reigning sect. 

"General acts of the Virginia Assembly of 1659, 1662 and 1693, 
had made it penal in parents to refuse to Ixave their children baptized ; 
had prohibited the unlawful assembly of Quakers ; had made it penal 
for anv master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the State ; had 
ordered those already here, and such as should come thereafter, to be 
imprisoned until they should abjure the country ; provided a milder 
punishment for their first and second return, but death for their third ; 
had inhibited all persons from suffering their meetings in or near 
their houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing of books 
which supported their tenets. 



10 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

"If no executions took place here, as did in New England, it was 
not owing to the moderation of the church or spirit of the legislature, 
as may be inferred from the law itself, but to historical circumstances 
that have not been handed down to us. 

" B}' our own Act of Assembly of 1705, if a person brought up in 
the Christian religion denies the existence of a God, or the Trinity, or 
asserts there are more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to 
be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority., he is punishable on 
the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment, eccle- 
siastical, civil or military, on the second by disability to sue, to take any 
gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor or administrator, and by three 
years' imprisonment, without bail. 

"A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in 
law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of 
course be severed from him and put by the authority of the court into 
more orthodox hands." 

Amidst a storm of opposition and obloquy such as was never before 
' seen on this continent, Jefferson resolutely attacked primogeniture? 
I entail, and the union of Church and State. 

From October the 11th to December the 5th the battle raged daily 
in the Virginia Assembly, and resulted in a substantial victory for 
f^ Jefferson, although the statute for religious toleration did not finally 
^ become a law until 1786. When nearly eighty years old, Mr. Jefferson 
spoke of this as the most terrible contest of his long andstornriy career. 
Against him were arrayed the wealthy families whose large estates 
were held by entail, the elder sons whose patrimonies were taken from 
them, and, more than all, the clergy and established church, who re- 
sented the statute for religious toleration as a blasphemous attack upon 
religion and a personal outrage upon themselves. Jefferson was de- 
nounced as a communist, an atheist, a foe to all religion, and the bit- 
ter enmities engendered by this conflict harassed him during life and 
assailed his memory after death. 

No one knew better than Jefferson how unrelenting is religious in- 
tolerance, and how dangerous the charge of infidelity or atheism to a 
public man, but so true was he to the rights of conscience that In 
his long life, and under all assaults, he made no reply to his 
enemies. He absolutely denied the right of any being, except his 
Maker, to call In question his religious belief , and thus he lived and 
died. 

In a private letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, dated April 21st, 1803, he 
wrote of his religious opinions : 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 11 

" They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very 
different from that anti-Christian system imputed to mf by those who 
know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I 
am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. 
I am a Christian in the sense in which He wished any one to be, sin- 
cerely attached to his doctrines m preference to all others, ascribing to 
himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any 
other." 

To his young grandson, when life had almost faded away, and he 
could feel upon his aged brow the breath of eternity, he wrote : 

" This letter will be to you as one from the dead. The writer will 
be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate 
father has requested that I would address you something which might 
possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to 
run, and I, too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. 

" Few words will be necessary with good dispositions on your part. 
Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neigh- 
bor as yourself and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be 
true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence, so that the life into 
which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable 
bliss. And if to the dead it be permitted to care for the things of this 
world, every action of your life will be under my regard." 

If this be atheism or infidelity, what honest man or pure woman 
will not pray that the world be filled with unbelief.? 

To Jefferson, the doctrines of primogeniture, entail, and an estab- 
lished church were but part and parcel of the system which gave to 
cei'tain families the divine right of governing their fellow men, and 
against this heresy, with all its incidents and corollaries, he made un- 
tiring and relentless war until the end of life. 

To him there was but one creed in matters spiritual or temporal : 
"All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
governed." 

In addition to the legislation abolishing primogeniture, entail, and 
an established church, Jefferson, at the same session of the Assembly, 
introduced and passed a bill fixing the terms upon which foreigners 
should be admitted as citizens of Virginia, and this act became the 
model for the general naturalization law of the United States. Under 
a resolution introduced by himself in October, 1776, he commenced 
the next summer, in connection with Edmund Pendleton and George 
WytKe, a revision of the laws of Virginia, and in 1779, after three 
years of arduous labor, the work was completed. ^ 



12 THOMAS JEFFERSON, 

But his great ambition was to establish a system of common schools, 
which should place a liberal education within the reach of every child 
in Virginia, to create high schools, found a library at Richmond at a 
cost of two thousand pounds a year, and change William and Mary 
College into a University. With indefatigable zeal he perfected all the 
details, but the war absorbed the entire resources of the common- 
wealth, and long years of eventful history passed before he realized 
any part of his cherished plans. 

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA. 

On June 1st, 1779, Jefferson was inaugurated Governor of Virginia, 
succeeding Patrick Henry, the first executive of the State. From the 
day of his inauguration to the hour when he retired from office, he was 
overwhelmed with difficulties, before which an ordinary man would 
have shrunk appalled and hopeless. 

Without navy, arms or money, Jefferson was expected to defend an 
exposed seaboard, furnish supplies to the Virginia troops in the field, 
and prevent the horrors of an Indian war on the western border. 

All that could be done by unflagging energy and the wisest fore 
thought he accomplished, but in 1780 the storm of v\^ar burst with re- 
lentless fury upon Virginia. 

Gates was defeated at Camden, the traitor Arnold sailed up the 
James, burning and pillaging on either side, until he captured Rich- 
mond, whilst news came that Washington's' army was on the eve of 
dissokition. 

(jTri 1781 Cornwallis invaded Virginia from the South, and a troop of 
cavalry dashed upon Monticello with" the hope of capturing Governor 
Jefferson. Five minutes before their ai'rival Jefferson escaped, and 
his faithful slaves refused, under bribes and thi'eats, to give informa- 
tion of the route he had taken. 

, As always in the hour of national calamity, a scapegoat was neces- 
sary to appease the popular disquietude, and Jefferson was in this 
instance the victim.. Conscious of his faithful discharge of duty, he 
chafed under these assaults as never before or after, and, although ac- 
quitted by the unanimous vote of the Assembly, declared that he 
would never arcept another public trust, and that, with the close of 
the war, his political career had ended. 

Surrounded at Monticello by his family, to whom he was tenderly 
attached, and with his books and flowers, Jefferson looked forward to 
years of quiet happiness, such as every man worn with the battle of 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 13 

life has pictured in his day dreams of the future. But Providence had 
destined otherwise. 

In the spring of 1782 death robbed him of a wife whose beauty and 
accomplishments gave to Monticello the most charming mistress that 
ever blessed a Virginia home, and from a stupor of grief Jefferson 
awoke, anxious to leave the scenes which constantly reminded him of 
his irreparable loss. 

Again he plunged into the vortex of politics, and in 1783 we find . 
him at Annapolis, ready to take his seat in Congress, to which he had 
been recently elected. Again he devoted himself with untiring assi- 
duity to public business, and, as chairman of the Committee on Coins 
and Currency, gave to his country and the world a system of coinage | 
on the decimal basis, the most perfect known amongst men. 

At the same session he introduced the celebrated ordinance, after- 
wards enacted in 1787, by which Virginia gave to the Union the great \/ 
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

ENVOY TO FRANCE. 

On May 7th, 1784, Jefferson was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to 
assist Mr. Adams and Dr. Franklin, then abroad, in concluding com- 
mercial treaties with Great Britain, Holland, and other governments, 
on " the footing of the most fav.©red nation," and on March 10th, 1785, 
he succeeded Dr. Franklin as minister to France. 

Jefferson remained in Europe five years, residing at Paris, and 
watching with the deepest interest the great drama of the French 
Revolution. He witnessed the fall of the Bastile, and the massacre of 
the Swiss Guards; but, like Charles James Fox, he saw through the 
blood and horror the outlines of liberty; and, unlike Burke, he beheld 
in the French queen, not only a beautiful and unfortunate woman but 
the reckless, self-indulgent cause of her husband's ruin. 

" This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke," he 
wrote forty years afterwards, " with some smartness of fancy, but no 
sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obsta- 
cles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to 
hold to her desire's or perish in their wreck. 

" Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count 
d'Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the 
exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand 
of the nation ; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and 
dauntless spirit, led herself to the Guillotine, drew the king on with 



14 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

her, and plunged the woi'ld into crimes and calamities which will for 
ever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that, 
had there been no queen, there would have been no Revolution, no 
force would have been provoked or exercised." 

Like John Knox, in the days of Mary Queen of Scots, Jefferson 
could not appreciate the beauty which looked without pity on the starv- 
ing multitude, and listened without emotion to the cries of her unfor- 
tunate people. 

The glamour of royalty did not seem to affect this stern repub- 
lican, who rejected with scorn the divine right of kings. 

In one of his letters he writes thus of the Monarchs then occupying 
the proudest thrones of earth : * 

" While I was in Europe, I often amused myself in contemplating 
the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the 
Sixteenth was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the 
answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, 
and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and des- 
patched two couriers a week over one thousand miles to let each other 
know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of 
Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of 
Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature, and so was the King of 
Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of govern- 
ment. The King of Prussia, successor to Frederick the Great, was a 
mere hog in body as well as in mind. 

" Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, 
and George of England,, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. 
There remained them none but old Catherine, who had been too 
lately picked up to have lost her common sense. 

" In this state Bonaparte found Europe, and it was the state of the 
rulers which lost it without a struggle. These animals had become 
without mind and powerless, and so will every hereditary monarch 
be after a few generations." 

Every fibre of Jefferson's being sympathized with the unfortunate 
people whose sweat and blood had been wrung fi"om them for cen- 
turies, to feed these royal animals, and every hour in Europe added to 
his hatred of the monarchical system. 

In February, 1787, he left Paris, and traveled incognito through the 
fairest provinces of France, investigating the home life of the people, 
their houses, food and modes of agriculture. He found in one province 
a laboring man's wages $27.75 per annum, and a woman's half that 
amount. " Their bread," he writes in his diary, " is half wheat and 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 15 

half rye, made once in three or four weeks, to prevent too great a con- 
sumption. In the morning they eat bread with an anchovy or an 
onion. Their dinner in the middle of the day is bread, soup and 
vegetables. Their supper is the same ; with their vegetables they have 
always oil and vinegar; on Sunday they have meat and wine." 

Besides attending to his diplomatic duties and making commercial 
treaties with all the. principal nations of Europe, Jefferson found time 
to correspond with leading scientists upon chemistry, astronomy, 
geology and natural history. He collected and shipped to the United 
States seeds and plants of all kinds suitable to our soil and climate, 
and procured for Buffon, the great naturalist, specimens of the ani- 
mals and birds peculiar to this continent. 

When in France, he wrote and published his celebrated "Notes on 
Virginia," which attracted universal attention, and passed through 
several editions. 

Whilst making treaties, writing philosophical essays, and watching 
the Revolution, this remarkable man invented an improved plough, 
which was awarded a medal 'by the Royal Agricultural Society of the 
Seine, and was exhibited to William C. Rives, IMinister to France in 
1853, as " The Prize Plough of Thomas Jefferson ;" afterwards he in- 
vented the revolving chair, now found in so many offices and house- 
holds. 

Rice was largely consumed in France, and anxious to know why the 
Amei-ican article was unable to compete successfully with that raised 
in Southern Europe, he made a journey across the Alps in 1787, into 
the rice-growing districts, and being unable to procure some improved 
seed rice, which he discovered there, on account of laws prohibiting 
its exportation, he filled the pockets of his coat and overcoat w^ith the 
best rice, of the best rice-producing district of Italy, and sent it to 
Charleston. It came to hand safely, was distributed in quantities of 
ten and twelve grains to planters, and being carefully tended, furnished 
South Carolina the best rice in the world. 

SECRETARY OF STATE. 

After five years of unremitting toil for his country and mankind, 
Jefferson was compelled to give some attention to his private affairs, 
and left Paris in October, 1789, with his two daughters, expecting to 
return within the year. On November 17th, 1789, he landed safely at 
Norfolk, and found an invitation from Washington to become .Sec- 
retary of State. 



16 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

With reluctance, but acting under. a sense of public obligation, he 
accepted the office, and entered upon its duties. 

Accustomed, as Jefferson must have been, to the uncertainty of 
political events and the mutations of public sentiment, he was pro- 
foundly astonished to find that a powerful party had come into exist-, 
ence in the United States, which distrusted the people, and favoi*ed 
a strong, if not monarchical government. 

At the head of this party was the Secretary of the Treasury, Alex- 
ander Hamilton, a man of rare ability and unquestionable courage, 
but without faith in republican institutions or in any form of govern- 
ment not possessing monaixhical features. 

That such were Hamilton's opinions cannot be doubted. 

In Madison's Debates of the Convention which framed the Consti- 
tution, we find Hamilton reported as saying that: 

"In his private opinion he had no scruple in declaring, supported as 
he was by the opinions of so many of the wise and good, that the 
British government was the best in the world." 

He declared that the Senate of the United States should be framed 
on the model of the House of Lords, and in speaking of the Chief 
Executive, said : 

" The English model is the only good one on this subject. The 
hereditary interests of the King were so interwoven with that of the 
nation, and his personal emoluments so great, that he was placed 
above the danger of being corrupted from abroad, and at the same 
time he was sufficiently independent and sufficiently controlled, to 
answer the purpose of the institution at home." 

The notes written by Hamilton himself, from which he delivered 
this speech, can be found in his life by his son, and in them are the 
following points : 

" Here I shall give my sentiments of the best form of government, 
not as a thing attainable by us, but as a model which we ought to ap- 
proach as near as possible. British Constitution best form. * * * So- 
ciety natui"ally divides itself into two political divisions — the few and 
the many — who have distinct interests, * * * and if separated they will 
need a mutual check. This check is a Monarch. * * * He ought to 
be hereditary, and to have so much power that it will not be his inter- 
est to risk much to acquire more." 

That there was a party in the United States disposed to Monarchy 
is put beyond question by the statements of Washington, Madison, 
Jay, John Marshall and Monroe. Even John Adams declared that, 
"The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 17 

liberties is not true ; they are the worst conceivable ; they are no keep- 
ers at all ; they can neither judge, act, think or will as a political body 
* * * Hypocrisy, simulation and finesse are not more practiced in 
the Courts than in popular elections, nor more encouraged by Courts 
than people." 

During the war for independence the Colonies had been held 
together by a common danger, but even then it was evident that the 
articles of confederation must be set aside and a sti'onger government 
established. yThe power to levy and collect taxes, provide for the 
general defence, and act as a Sovereign within its proper sphere, 
were necessary attributes of government demanded by self-preserva- 
tion itself. 

This necessity created a tendency to centralization, and the excesses 
of the French revolution, at which the world stood aghast, furnished 
what seemed a conclusive argument against popular government. 

Jefferson soon found himself almost alone in the elegant society of 
New York. The wealth, culture and refinement of the city were 
shocked at the atrocities committed in Paris, and Hamilton was their 
pet and idol. 

" I had left France," Mr. Jefferson wrote long after, " In the first 
year of her revolution, in the fervor of national rights, and zeal 
for reformation. My conscientious devotion to those rights could 
not be heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily ex- 
ercise. 

" The President received me cordially, and my colleagues and the 
principal citizens apparently with welcome. The courtesies of dinner 
parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed me 
at once in their familiar society. But I cannot. describe the wonder and 
mortification with which the table conversation filled me. Politics 
were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly over republican gov- 
ernment was evidently the favorite sentiment. 

" An apostate I could not be, nor yet a hypocrite ; and I found my- 
self, for the mo§t part, the only advocate on the republican side of the 
question, unless among the guests there chanced to be some member 
of that party from the legislative houses." 

It was not possible that harmony, or any relation except that of an- 
tagonism, should exist between Jefferson and Hamilton, They were 
both men of great ability, positive convictions, and with views utterly 
irreconcilable as to the government. 

Jefferson was the incarnate principle of Democracy, pure and sim- 
ple, without alloy. 



18 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

Hamilton had no sympathy with the people, or popular government. 
In February, 1802, he wrote to Gouverneur Morris, his most intimate 
friend, and afterwards his eulogist: 

" Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the United States 
has sacrificed or done more for the present constitution than myself, 
and, contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from the 
beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. 
* * * Every day proves to me more and more that this American 
world was not made for me." 

Notwithstanding the great authority of Washington, and the influence 
which his character exercised upon all who approached him, there 
soon occurred an open rupture between the Secretary of State and the 
Secretary of the Treasury. 

In February, 1792, Jefferson mentioned to the President his inten- 
tion to retire from the Cabinet, and, when pressed for his reasons, 
frankly stated that it was impossible for Col. Hamilton and himself to 
continue together in the administration, and that now a proposition 
had been brought forward, the decision of which must definitely deter- 
mine " whether we live under a limited or unlimited government." 

" To what proposition do you allude?" asked the President. 

" To that," replied Jefferson, "in the report of manufactures (by 
Hamilton), which, under color of giving bounties for the encourage- 
ment of particular manufactures, meant to establish the doctrine that 
the constitution, in giving power to Congress to provide for the gen- 
eral welfare, permitted Congress to take everything under their charge 
which they should deem for the public welfare. If this was main- 
tained, then the enumeration of powers in the constitution does not at 
all constitute the limits of their authority." 

If Jefferson should now revisit the earth, he would find the same 
doctrine advanced even amongst those who claim to be exponents of 
his principles and teaching. 

In the meantime all Europe was preparing to attack France, and 
the question presented to Washington's Cabinet was whether the 
•United States should remain neutral or assist the people who had 
assisted us in our struggle for Independence.? 

On April 22nd, 1793, the proclamation for neutrality was issued, 
and on the same day Citizen Genet arrived in a French frigate as min- 
ister to the United States from the French Republic. 

He was received with such tumultuous acclamation as was never 
before or since given to any ambassador or visitor to our shores. Pub- 
lic meetings, banquets, oratory and music evidenced the'deep feeling 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 19 

of the American people for the cause of France. A storm of indig- 
nation burst upon Washington and his Cabinet for refusing to give 
immediate assistance to our allies of the war for Independence, then 
struggling against the combnied despotism of Europe, led by England. 

It is impossible for us to realize now the popular excitement of those 
eventful days, or the clamor raised aboitt the government, but Wash- 
ington and his Cabinet stood firm, and the resvilt justified the wisdom 
of their course. 

Jefferson's correspondence with Genet and the English minister, 
afterwards published by order of Congress, stands to-day and will for- 
ever remain, the most wonderful exhibition of learning, skill and 
moderation to be found in the annals of diplomacy. 

VICE-PRESIDENT. 

Jefferson retired from Washington's cabinet on January the 1st, 1794, 
the acknowledged leader of the Republican party, and with the compli- 
ments and plaudits of his countrymen. Even his enemies were forced 
to admit that his correspondence with Genet had exhibited the highest 
order of ability, and had shown him to be both patriot and statesman. 

In 1796 he was called from Monticello to become Vice-President, 
Mr. Adams having received in the Electoral College seventy-one votes 
and Mr. Jefferson sixty eight, which resulted, as the constitution then 
provided, in making the former Pi-esident and the latter Vice-President 
of the United States. 

To the duties of this office he brought the same industry and learn- 
ing as to every other position. 

When a young lawyer, beginning his public career as a member of 
the Virginia House of Burgesses, he had adopted the practice of 
noting down in a small, leather-bound volume rules and precedents in 
parliamentary law, and upon this as a basis he now prepared his 
" Manual of Parliamentary Practice," the highest authority in legis- 
lative proceedings known to the civilized world. 

PRESIDENT. 

In the meantime the Federalists and Republicans were marshalling 
their forces for the Presidential contest of 1800. The conservative and 
mediatory influence of Washington had been withdrawn, and party 
spirit raged untramelled. 

The press was in the hands of the Federalists, and Jefferson the 
mark at which all their arrows were aimed. He was pictured as an 



20 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

atheist, libertine, a monster in human form. One of the favorite 
charges against him was that he was an ally of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
the Corsican tyrant. The political preacher had already appeared in 
the Presidential canvass, and although not so alliterative as in modern 
times, was equally as sensational. 

The great preacher then in New York was Dr. John Mason, and he 
was shocked beyond measure to find from the "Notes on Virginia," 
that Jefferson had doubts as to there having been a universal deluge. 
Some days before the election Dr. Mason published a pamphlet en- 
titled, " The Voice of Warning to Christians on the Ensuing Elec- 
tion," in which he exclaimed: "Christians! it is thus that a man, 
whom you are expected to elevate to the chief magistracy, insults 
yourself and your Bible." 

We can imagine what sort of partisan this reverend politician must 
have been, when we learn that in one of his sermons he paused and 
with uplifted hands and eyes burst into prayer : 

" Send us, if thou wilt, murrain upon our cattle, a famine upon our 
land, cleanness of teeth in our borders, send us pestilence to waste our 
cities, send us, if it pleases Thee, the swoi^d to Vjathe itself in the blood of 
our sons, but spare us. Lord God Most Merciful, spare us that curse — 
most dreadful of all curses — an alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte." 

As he uttered these words the blood gushed from his nostrils, but 
putting his handkerchief to his face, he then waved it aloft as if a 
bloody banner in the coming- contest. 

Through all this scandal and vituperation, temporal and ecclesias- 
tical, the people, as they always do, discerned the true issue, and the 
Republicans were successful. Jefferson and Burr each received 
seventy-three votes in the Electoral College, to sixty-five for Adams, 
sixty-four for Pinckney, and one for Jay, and after some weeks of 
great excitement the House of Representatives ratified the will of the 
people by making Jefferson President and Burr Vice-President. The 
alien and sedition laws had done their work, and the first Republican 
administration assumed control of the Government. 

The new President rode to the Capitol on horseback, hitched bis 
steed to the palings, and quietly took the oath of ofhce. There was 
no procession, no Inaugural ball, no show and parade. Right or 
wrong, this was Jefferson's idea of a republic, and the commencement 
of a Republican administration. 

It is interesting to know that in the first year of his administration 
Mr. Jefferson made sixteen removals from office, and in the next year 
about the same number, but the demand on the part of his own ad- 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 21 

herents was vigorous and persistent for a more frequent use of the offi- 
cial guillotine. In the second year of his administration he wrote to 
one of his Cabinet : 

'• I still think our original idea as to office is best ; that is, to depend 
for the obtaining a just participation, on deaths, resignations and de- 
linquencies. This will least affect the tranquillity of the people, and 
prevent their giving in to the suggestion of our enemies, that ours has 
been a contest for office, not for principle." 

During the administrations of Washington and Adams the absurd cus- 
tom of Congress beingopenedby the President with apersonal address had 
been adopted, in imitation of the Eriglish system, but Jefferson quietly 
transmittedhismessageinwriting, and suchhas been the custom ever since. 

He also refused to hold weekly levees, where a mob of sweating and un- 
comfortable people, in tawdryfinery, torture each other and the President 
until life becomes a burthen, but this travesty on common sense has since 
returned to plague the chief executive and disgust the sensible public. 

Jefferson sought to simplify the government, and relieve it from the 
display and extravagance by which monarchy aimed to dazzle the peo- 
ple and conceal the outrages inflicted upon them. 

The trinity of his political faith was a strict construction of the con- 
stitution, economy in. expenditures, and honest men in office. 

His inaugural on March the 4th, 1801, should be treasured with 
Washington's Farewell Address. 

"Equal and exact justice to men of whatever state or persuasion, 
religious or political, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all 
nations, entangling alliances with none ; the support of the State 
governments in all their rights, as the most competent administration 
for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-repub- 
lican tendencies ; the preservation of the general government in its 
whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home, 
and safety abroad ; a jealous care of the right of election by the people ' 
— a mild and safe corrective of abuses, which are lopped by the sword 
of revolution, when peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute 
acquiescence in the decision of the majority, the vital principle of Re- 
publics from which. there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle 
and immediate source of despotism ; a well disciplined militia, our 
best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars 
may relieve them ; the supremacy of the civil over the military 
authority; economy in the public expense that labor may be lightl}' 
burdened ; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of 
the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as 



22 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

its handmaid ; the diffusing of information and the arraignment of 
all abuses at the bar of public reason ; freedom of religion ; freedom of 
the press ; freedom of persons under the protection of the habeas 
corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected." 

The first important act of Mr. Jefferson's administration was to dis- 
patch three frigates and one sloop of our small navy to the Mediterra- 
nean, for the purpose of overawing the Algerine pirates and termi- 
nating their daring attacks upon American commerce. 

When Minister to France, he had been annoyed and irritated by the 
fact that the United States and other nations were compelled to pay 
tribute to these buccaneers. Onte bill sent to Mr. Jefferson for the 
ransom of an American crew was as follows: 

$18,000 

....... 8,000 

8,000 

....... 29,600 



For 3 captains, 


$6,000 


each. 


" 2 mates, 


4,000 


( i 


" 2 passengers. 


4,000 


li 


" 14 seamen, 


1,400 


.i 



$53,600 

Jefferson was determined that this national disgrace should be ob- 
literated, and history shows how well and thoroughly the gallant De- 
catur carried out the instructions of his chief. 

The most splendid achievement of Jefferson's administration, how- 
ever, was the acquisition by purchase from Napoleon of the Louisiana 
Territory, which extended our limits from ocean to ocean and gave us 
the mouth of the Mississippi. 

When the treaty was signed at Paris, Mr. Livingstone, one of the 
Commissioners, said: 

"We have lived, long, but this is the noblest work of our whole 
lives. The treaty which we have just signed has not been obtained by 
art nor dictated by force. It will change vast solitudes into flourishing 
districts, and from this day the United States take their place among 
the powers of the first rank. * * * The instruments which we 
have ]ust signed will cause no tears to be shed. They prepare ages 
of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures. 

"The Mississippi and Missouri will see them succeed one another and 
multiply, truly worthy of the regard and care of. providence, in the 
bosom of equality, under just laws, freed from the errors of supersti- 
tion and bad government." 

"If to the dead it be permitted to care for the things of this 
world," with what satisfaction must the spirit of Jefferson to-day look 
down upon this vast domain, acquired by his patriotic foresight; a land 
of plenty, filled with happy homes, and temples devoted to education, 
science and art, such as this in which we now assemble ? 






THOMAS JEFFERSON. 23 

After acquiring Louisiana, including the vast region stretching to 
the Pacific, Mr. Jefferson's next object was to ascertain the nature and 
resources of these possessions, and for this purpose the expedition of 
Lewis and Clark left St. Louis in 1805, came up the Missouri, and for two 
years, four months and ten days was lost to civilization, and exposed to 
dangers and hardships, the recital of which equals the stories of romance. 

Not many months after the acquisition of Louisiana, intelligence 
reached the President of the treasonable design of Aaron Burt to 
seize upon the mouth of the Mississippi, invade Mexico, and establish 
a south-western empire. After the death of Hamilton, Burr had 
served out his term as Vice President, presiding at the impeachment 
trial of Judge Chase, and then finding his public carreer ended, his 
restless ambition had conceived the scheme which ruined Blenner- 
hassett, and made himself an outcast and a wanderer. 

Party rancor attempted at the time to make Burr a martyr, and 
Jefferson a tyrant, but impartial history has long since entered the 
judgment that the President was right, and that Burr was guilty of the 
designs attributed to him. 

The latter part of Jefferson's second term was clouded with the 
prospect of war with England, and with the distress caused by the 
embargo, which he enforced to the end of his administration, in the 
hope of averting an expensive and ruinous conflict of arms. 

In 1809, with the country four times greater in resources and terri- 
tory than in 1800, his second term as President closed, and after forty- 
four years public service he transferred the government to his friend 
James Madison and went back to Monticello, and to the labor of love, 
which had been amongst the dreams of his early ambition. His whole 
energies were now devoted to establishing the University of Virginia, 
upon a system singularly illustrative of that equality and liberty 
which formed the leading characteristics of Jefferson's life and opin- 
ions. The University differs from other American colleges in these 
particulars ; there is no President, and all the professors are of equa- 
rank except that one of them is elected chairman of the faculty. The 
University is simply a group of schools, and the student chooses him- 
self the studies he elects to pursue. Unlike other institutions, there is 
no I'ule requiring a student to attend i-eligious exercises, but his con- 
duct in this regard is governed entirely by his own sense of right. 

The ruling idea in every detail is an absence of coercion, and an ap- 
peal to manhood and conscience. 

Jefferson lived seventeen years after the close of his public career, 
and his last hours were embittered by the pressure of debts which he was 



24 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

unable to satisfy. His splendid library, a portion of it left him by George 
Wythe, was sold to the United States, and he was finally compelled to 
ask the Legislature of Virginia to authorize him to dispose of his lands by 
lottery, in order to meet the harassing liabilities pressing upon him. 

Although an exact man, Jefferson practiced the hospitality which 
prevailed in Virginia everywhere at that time, and he had never 
learned the modern methods by which a public officer can in a few 
years become a millionaire upon a small salary. When he left Wash- 
ington City he was forced to borrow ten thousand dollars to pay debts 
contracted for household exp'enses, and whilst we may deprecate the 
style of living which necessitated such outlay, we must admire the in- 
tegrity that procured the money to meet the debt by a mortgage upon 
Monticello, rather than by a raid upon the public treasury. 

Upon the canvass of the past, Washington and Jefferson stand forth 
the central figures in our struggle for independence. The character of 
the former was so rounded and justly proportioned, that so long as our 
ccuntry lives, or a single community of Americans can be found, 
Washington will be " first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts 
of his countrymen." 

To Washington we are more indebted than to any one man for 
national existence, but what availed the heroism of Bunker Hill, the 
sufferings of Valley Forge, or the triumph at Yorktown, if the Gov- 
ernment they established had been but an imitation of the monarchy 
frona which we had separated.^ 

To Jefferson we owe eternal gratitude for his sublime confidence in 
popular government, and his unfaltering courage in defending at aU 
times and in all places, the great truth, that "All governments derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed." 

France has given to the people of the United States a statue of 
Liberty, which will stand in the Gateway of the Republic, a beacon- 
light to the oppressed of all lands. 

It has been placed there, not by monopqlists and millionaires, but 
with the contributions of the sempstress in her garret, the wage-worker 
in factory and furnacev/ The love of Liberty is found not in palaces, 
but with the poor and oppressed. It flutters in the heart of the caged 
bird, and sighs with the worn and wasted prisoner in his dungeon. It 
has gone with martyrs to the stake, and kissed their burning lips as the 
tortured spirit winged its flight to God ! 

In the temple of this deity Jefferson was high priest! 

For myself, I worship no mortal man living or dead ; but if I could 
kneel at such a shrine, it would be with uncovered head and loving 
heart at the grave of Thomas Jefferson. 



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